Modern basketball court floors are typically constructed of wood. There are performance specifications for the finish of wood courts, particularly when it comes to traction and grip. These specifications ensure that players on the court have a consistent support surface from venue to venue and that slippage is reduced, thereby improving player safety. These specifications first and foremost protect the safety and well-being of the athletes.
Within the business of collegiate and professional basketball markets, and other court-sport markets, there is the continual need for college and professional basketball teams to seek sponsorship and advertising revenues to increase the profitability of their operations. Over the years, the advertising and television revenues associated with college and professional basketball have been steadily increasing. To provide more advertising opportunities for temporary sponsorships or advertising, or semi-permanent applications, there has recently been a need in the art for decals applied to the wood floors to promote a particular event, product, or sponsor. These decals may be desired to be in place for one game (a temporary application), a particular tournament, or an entire season (a semi-permanent application). One early finding was that the decals which are simply applied over the finished wood court surface provide a wearing surface that has a significantly different coefficient of friction than the finished wood court surface. This inconsistent playing surface resulted in a few player injuries. As such, the bodies governing the sports mandated that the decals have a similar coefficient of friction as the finished wood surface. To accommodate this, early providers of these decals simply applied a layer of the floor finish over a vinyl decal once it was adhered to the floor. This provided a consistent surface on a very temporary basis; however, after being used for more than just a few games, the finish layer delaminates from the surface of the decal in unpredictable locations and/or chips off to expose portions of the vinyl decal. This delamination or chipping of the floor finish layer on the previous decals requires regular maintenance and/or reapplication of the decal and/or coating layer. Moreover, this unpredictable surface inconsistency also leads to athletes slipping or turning ankles or knees due to encountering the exposed vinyl portions of these decals. Regular maintenance and/or reapplication of the finish layer is cost and labor intensive and cuts into the financial incentive to use temporary or semi-permanent decals to provide on-floor advertising or sponsorship signage.
Another attempt to provide a useable decal was a laminated vinyl decal in which the top surface was manufactured to include the required coefficient of friction. However, these decals have been shown to wear really fast and quickly lose the necessary coefficient of friction. Thus, the performance of these type of laminated decals is inconsistent, unreliable and do not allow for semi-permanent use.
Thus, there is a need in the art to supply a coated decal that (1) has a surface with a coefficient of friction matching the remaining wood floor, and (2) provides a durable finish which allows the decal to be used on both a temporary (such as a single game or weekend tournaments) and semi-permanent basis (such as an entire season or significant portion thereof) without requiring additional maintenance and/or replacement.